My Blue Heaven

by Mollie Doyle

Elizabeth Cecil

Blueberries, plain and simple

Last July, my family and I discovered quite a few old high bush blueberries covered with ripe fruit near our house. For a couple of weeks, we would walk outside (several times a day), take thirty or so steps and then stand around a bush, pick, and eat. The berries were warm from the sun, and when we bit into them, they would pop, spilling juice in our mouths and sometimes down our chins. We had blue fingers. Blue tongues. It felt like finding gold.

Because they brought so much pleasure, I began to wonder about blueberries. I knew they were a “superfood,” but what did that mean? What do they really do for us? So, I began reading about them, talking to people. Now, I am in awe of blueberries, convinced that they are a miracle food, or just a miracle.

I am not alone in my excitement. Even the USDA, an organization known more for its understatement than hyperbole, calls blueberries, “phytonutrient superstars.” And in 1999, they went so far as to proclaim July as National Blueberry Month.

“I love them too,” says Dr. Oceana Rames of Vineyard Haven, who eats blueberries every day and takes a blueberry extract as a supplement. Dr. Rames, trained and nationally board-certified in Naturopathic Medicine and co-owner of Church and Main Natural Therapies, treats her patients with diet and nutrition, botanical medicines and homeopathy. Dr. Rames tells me, “Blueberries are on the top ten list of healthiest foods. They have ellagic acid, a powerful antioxidant that is antiviral, antibacterial, helps to keep cell walls healthy, and prevents cell damage. They also help with varicosity and blood circulation.” And Dr. Rames tells me they even improve vision. In World War II, night pilots ate bilberries, a close relative of our native blueberries, to improve their night vision. Several studies since then have proven what the fighter pilots already knew: that bilberries and blueberries significantly improve visual acuity and retinal function.

While I understand that eating blueberries has amazing healing potential, I want to know how…and why.

So, I called internationally known scientist Mary Ann Lila, Ph.D. Dr. Lila is a Professor and the Food Science Director of Plants for the Human Health Institute at North Carolina State University, where she also runs the Lila Lab, dedicated to studying berries. Dr. Lila has studied blueberries for 27 years and is the rock star of blueberry research. She began her career studying cranberries, but soon found that its closest relative, the blueberry, had more beneficial chemicals that could address many more human health conditions. Her innovative and groundbreaking work is what is responsible for us knowing most of what we know about the healing properties of blueberries.

These days she is one of the key players on the team of scientists who are mapping the blueberry genome, a project which is expected to be completed and published by the team this September. Having a map of a plant’s genome is important to us because when we know the entire system and chemical mechanisms of a plant, we understand how we can use it more effectively. For instance, when the blueberry genome is mapped, the medical community might be able to say, “Use this particular phytochemical to treat your tumors.” Versus “Eat more blueberries. Their phytochemicals have cancer-fighting agents.”

Dr. Lila explains why these phytochemicals exist, “Like us, plants have evolved over time. But there is one major difference: Plants are stationary. They cannot run from their predators—animals, bacteria, bugs, pollution, even water. So they have had to develop a complex and very sophisticated portfolio of protection: phytochemicals. These phytochemicals not only give a plant its color, but work to offer each plant all the things it needs to survive.”

Dr. Lila explains that this is why you want to eat blueberries from the wild—the more stressed they are (within reason), the more powerful the phytochemicals they produce.

Different plants have evolved to have different phytochemicals, according to the need of the plant. For example, anthocyanins, the phytochemical that makes a blueberry blue, evolved out of the plant’s need to protect its cells against damage caused by UV radiation. As Dr. Rames pointed out, when we eat blueberries, these anthrocyanins also work to protect our cells.

Dr. Lila expands on this. “This is why eating colorful fruits and vegetables is so important. The more color (phytochemicals) you eat, the more you are supporting your body. Look at your plate. Is it brown and white or is it a rainbow of color, red, orange, green, purple? You want a rainbow.”

“Phytochemicals are completely unlike a synthetic drug that targets one enzyme in the body. They work synergistically, affecting many areas of the body and each other. My work is to identify exactly how so that I can prove to doctors what your grandmother has already told you: eat your fruits and vegetables.” With the genome mapped this fall, she and all of us will soon know a lot more.

But I think there is something healing about blueberries that is more than cellular science. I can’t hold a blueberry without thinking about childhood summer days, tramping through the woods, avoiding poison ivy as I searched for wild blueberries. When I remember this, I can almost feel the roundness between my thumb and forefinger plucking a berry from a bush. And when I talked to friends—even Dr. Rames—about blueberries, stories of blueberry picking and pie making always came up. Like many, picking blueberries was my first experience of gathering food from the wild. Bucket in hand, sun on my back, I felt independent, the world was nourishing and abundant, anything was possible. A kind of blue heaven. I can’t think of anything more healing than this.

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The Blueberry Maven of Martha’s Vineyard Shares Some Secrets

This year is Susan Murphy’s 25th year as an organic blueberry cultivator and purveyor. In 1986, Susan Murphy planted 400 blueberry bushes on 2 acres of land near her house. She has been selling them commercially since 1989. Here are her top tips for cultivating blueberries, based on her experience of “winging it.” To learn more or to pick blueberries (starting on Bastille Day), call Susan at (508) 645-2883.

2. Don’t pick too soon. Blueberries turn blue 10 days before they are ready to pick. As soon as they turn blue, throw the netting over the berries, attach the netting with spring loaded clothes pins (these hook best onto the bush). And wait for the sun to sweeten the berries.

3. Fertilize in the fall. The soil is most receptive to nutrients at this time of year. Susan buys North Country Organics Pro-Holly 4-6-4 from Mitchell Posin at the Allen Sheep & Wool Farm in Chilmark.

4. Use sawdust mulch. Susan says, “Blueberries ideally don’t like to have their feet wet. But, at the same time, they like to be about 12 inches from the water table. A boggy area is the ideal environment. If you don’t have a boggy area (we don’t), mulching your plants is just as effective. It keeps the roots moist, but not wet.” Sawdust makes the best mulch. Place mulch an inch or two away from the stalks and fan it out all the way so that it lies under all of the plant’s branches. This keeps grass from growing under the bush. Blueberries have shallow roots and grass can outcompete the bush for water and nutrients. Note: If you are watering your plants (because they are new or it is particularly dry), water early in the morning to decrease evaporation.

5. Prune in the winter or spring. Susan offers pruning workshops in January. To find out more or sign up, call (508) 645-2883.

Blueberries Straight Up

Take a walk in a sunny area—Fulling Mill Brook, Long Point or Cedar Tree Neck are a few of my favorite spots. But according to Tom Clark, Collection and Grounds Manager of the Polly Hill Arboretum, forage anywhere on the Island where oak trees grow and the soil is sandy.

There are two blueberry varieties here on the Island: high bush and low bush. According to Tom, both are fairly easy to identify. The high bush blueberry is upright, 6-12 feet tall with a multi-stemmed, crown-forming shrub. The branches are yellow-green in the spring and summer, reddish in the winter.

Low bush blueberry looks more like groundcover than a shrub and is “knee high at best.” The leaves for both the high bush and low bush are deciduous. They have bell-shaped flowers in the spring. In the summer, the fruit is the tell. The fruit of blueberry plants have blue-hued berries with a small fringed calyx of five sepals (tiny green leaves) at the base of the fruit. In the fall, the bushes turn a burnished red. Wild blueberries are a deep blue fruit about the size of a pea. Tom pointed out that they often have a whitish coating just like grapes. Pick berries. Eat.

Rest assured that, according to Tom, the only plant one might confuse for a blueberry bush that is blooming at the same time is the black huckleberry, which is also edible so “nothing bad will come of it.” The huckleberry has a shinier fruit and a larger, “bonier” seed.

Blueberries—A Powerful Healing Food

They stop cancer from forming and proliferating. And, they have even been found to shrink tumors.

They improve memory by stopping cellular degeneration.

They are rich in anthrocyanins. Anthrocyanins are water-soluble pigments that make a plant’s berries, fruit, or vegetable appear red, purple, or blue. They have been found to help prevent and treat metabolic syndromes such as Type II Diabetes. In fact, in a recent study, concentrated amounts of anthrocyanins from blueberries worked better than a popular diabetes drug in controlling blood sugar levels in mice.

Like their closest relative, the cranberry, they can prevent urinary tract infections.

They are rich in Vitamin C, are fiber rich, a great source of Vitamin E, and have manganese.